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Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ṭayyib b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 436/1044), was a Muʿtazilī theologian and jurisprudent. His kunya is sometimes given as Abū l-Ḥasan, but Abū l-Ḥusayn seems to be the correct form. 1. His life Much of his biography can be reconstructed only hypothetically, since few concrete data are available. He must have been born not later than 370/980 and grew up in Basra, as a Ḥanafī with a Muʿtazilī creed, and it was there that he heard ḥadīth. Then he moved to Baghdad, where he studied medicine and became attached to the Nestorian physician and ph…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdān (d. 286/899) was a pre-Faṭimid Ismāʿīlī dāʿī active in the rural district (sawād) of Kufa. Al-Masʿūdī gives his father's name as al-Rabīṭ, but this is most likely a slur meaning “the pimp.” According to the late account of al-Kāshānīʿs Zubdat al-tawārīkh, he came from a village in the sawād. However, in a quotation from the well-informed early account of Akhū Muḥsin he is called al-Ahwāzī. While it is not impossible that this nisba was added to his name through confusion with a well-known Sunnī traditionist, ʿAbdān al-Ahwāzī, it seems more likely th…

Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbaydallāh, a prominent early Companion of Muḥammad, is considered to have been among the first eight converts to Islam and one of the ten mubashshara to whom the Prophet promised Paradise. He belonged to the Banū ʿAmr b. Kaʿb, the leading clan of the Taym b. Murra of the Quraysh, and was a second-degree cousin of Abū Bakr, with whom he was already closely associated before the advent of Islam. Abū Bakr, who was some twenty years his elder, may have trained him in the caravan trade in Syria, a business he later pursued successfully. By his own account, he first learned of the adve…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf b. ʿAbd ʿAwf b. ʿAbd (al-Ḥārith) b. al-Ḥārith b. Zuhra (d. 32/652–3) was a prominent early Companion of Muḥammad and one of the ten for whom he prophesied Paradise. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was born in about 579 C.E. and became a Muslim at the age of thirty-one, at which time he was a successful caravan trader with close ties to the Meccan nobility of Umayya and ʿAbd Shams (ancestors of clans of the Meccan nobility). His father, ʿAwf, had been associated in the caravan trade…

Ḥujr b. ʿAdī b. Jabala b. ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Kindī was a Companion of the Prophet, a military leader in the early Muslim conquests, and a close supporter of the caliph ʿAlī (r. 35–40/656–61). He was executed in 52/672 by the caliph Muʿāwiya (r. 41–60/661–80). He belonged to the tribal nobility of the Banū ʿAdī b. Rabīʿa b. Muʿāwiya al-Akramūn of Kinda. With his brother Hāniʾ, he visited the Prophet in Medina—probably in the delegation of Kinda led by al-Ashʿath b. Qays in 10/631—and accept…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Yazīd al-Fazārī (b. c. 130/748, d. after 179/795) was a Kufan Ibāḍī kalām theologian of the Ibāḍī subsect of the Khārijīs. He was born in Kufa, probably not later than 130/748, into a family of the Arab tribe of Fazāra. His training as an Ibāḍī scholar most likely took place in Basra under Abū ʿUbayda Muslim b. Abī Karīma (d. before 158/775), whom he recognised as the spiritual leader of the early Ibāḍiyya, after Jābir b. Zayd al-Azdī (d. c. 93/712). In Kufa al-Fazārī owned a silk trad…

Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ b. al-Ashʿath was the leader of the Qarmatian movement in the sawād (rural district) of Kufa. Al-Ṭabarī (3:2125) has Karmītah, which is supposed to mean “red-eyed.” The diminutive form Qarmāṭūya is used by al-Nawbakhtī and Niẓām al-Mulk. Originally a carrier (who transported goods on oxen) from the village of al-Dūr in the ṭassūj (subdistrict) of Furāt Bādaqlā (east of Kufa), he was converted to the early Ismāʿīlī movement by the dāʿī (propagandist) al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī. The date 264/878 given for his conversion by a much later report may be approximate…